Modern transport vehicles, such as commercial aircraft, usually comprise a passenger cabin that provides a distinct flexibility in arranging various components. For example, passenger seat rows, monuments and partition walls may be fastened to seat rails that essentially extend along the whole length of a passenger cabin floor and thereby provide a certain fastening grid. Also, electric and electronic overhead devices may be distributed inside the cabin, for example at the underside of overhead storage compartments, for providing passenger-related functions such as reading lights, information and warning signs, flight attendant call buttons, etc.
It is known to provide electrical power and data communication to various installed components by means of a contactless power and data transfer system. These are based on an electromagnetic transfer of electric power from primary magnetic elements to secondary magnetic elements, wherein the primary magnetic elements may be fixed to a floor or to the underside of overhead storage compartments and wherein the secondary magnetic elements are connected to the installed components.
WO 2012 085 097 A2 discloses a system and a method for contactless transfer of power and data within a cabin of a vehicle and especially an aircraft cabin.
WO 2011 073 063 A1 discloses a system for determining a position of a vehicle component relative to another vehicle component.
For improving the functionality of various passenger-related functions in a modern passenger cabin of a vehicle, it is paramount to provide positional and functional information about installed components which is further referred to as cabin layout information. Based on the high flexibility of a modern passenger cabin, a physical reconfiguration of a cabin layout leads to the necessity of manually re-adjusting the cabin layout information stored in a cabin management system. Presently, no system or method exists that may support this cabin layout information adjustment for reducing the effort in fully using the flexibility of the passenger cabin.